OUR ALLY FRANCE
O torn out of thy trance,
O deathless, O my France,
O many-wounded mother, O redeemed to reign!
O rarely sweet and bitter
The bright brief tears that glitter
On thine unclosing eyelids, proud of their own pain;
The beautiful brief tears
That wash the stains of years
White as the names immortal of thy chosen and slain.
SWINBURNE.
Tout homme deux pays—le sien et puis la France.
VICTOR HUGO.
Among the many changes which this great war will bring about, it will
certainly again make true Victor Hugo’s touching boast, “Two countries
hath each man—his own and France.”
For nearly a thousand years this was true of all the gentlepeople in our
three kingdoms. Scotsmen and Irishmen might be at daggers drawn with
England, but always they remained not only friendly, but on the closest
terms of intimacy with France. Charming French princesses married
Scottish kings, and you will perhaps remember that when the great Scots
wizard waved his wand, “the bells would ring in Notre Dame,” not,
observe, in Westminster Abbey or in Old St. Paul’s!
There was a Scots College and an Irish College in Paris, and no one in
Scotland and Ireland was reckoned a scholar unless he had studied in
France.
The fact that England and France were almost always at war made no
difference to this pleasant state of things, and now we like to remember
that the one place where, till this year, British and French fought side
by side, was in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In old days wars
raged over years, not over weeks or months, and now and again great
stretches of French country belonged to England. I know a beautiful
parish church in the heart of France which was built by the British in
the thirteenth century—seven hundred years ago.
Those of you who have learned any history must know that poor Queen Mary
exclaimed that when she died the word “Calais” would be found graven on
her heart, so deeply had she felt its recapture by the French. Not long
ago, speaking of the Germans’ desperate wish to get to Calais, a great
English writer observed, smiling, “As to the effect which their
occupation of Calais would produce on this country, they are three
hundred years too late. Calais is not inscribed on the heart of _our_
Queen Mary!”
Ill-fortune often brings countries far more closely together than does
good fortune. After the execution of Charles I, English, Scottish, and
Irish loyalists fled to France, and lived there long years of a not
unhappy exile. Louis XIV gave them a magnificent welcome. He presented
the Stuarts with one of his most comfortable palaces, one, too, within
an easy distance of his own palace at Versailles; and when you read the
enchanting, intimate letters of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, you
will see how much the two courts intermingled, and what a constant
coming and going there was from France to England and from England to
France. When Charles II became king he did not forget his French
friends. In fact I think it may be whispered that he remained far more
of a Parisian than a Londoner, and you will feel this too if you ever
read the letters he wrote to his beloved sister, the fascinating
Henrietta, who had married the brother of Louis XIV.
England was very English in the eighteenth century, but, even so, there
was constant intercourse between London and Paris. English names occur
almost as often as French ones in the correspondence of the famous
Madame du Deffand, and the best picture of the French society of that
day is to be found in the letters of her old friend, Horace Walpole.
Marie Antoinette had many dear English friends, and Englishwomen as well
as Englishmen were made very welcome by her, not only in the Palace of
Versailles, but at her own beloved Petit Trianon.
So close was the tie then between the two countries that they read as a
matter of course each other’s books. Innumerable little girls in France
are now called Clarisse because of a wonderful story, written by an
English bookseller named Benjamin Richardson, called “Clarissa Harlowe.”
Equally in this country, few, if any, children were named Clare or Julia
before the publication of “La Nouvelle Héloise,” written by the Jean
Jacques Rousseau to whom I alluded in my first chapter.
You might have thought that the great Revolution would have broken the
old connection between the two countries and the two capitals. So far
was this from being the case that there were many people in England who
sympathised with the aims of the Revolution. Others, while regarding all
that went on in the France of that day with horror, yet felt their
affection for France and the French people become closer. An
affectionate familiarity between the two countries was further
encouraged by the sudden appearance in England of thousands of French
people, who, known as the Emigrés, were largely composed of members of
the French nobility who had escaped from France on the eve of the great
Revolution. Many of them lived in England till after the Battle of
Waterloo, and our grandmothers were all taught French, dancing, and the
harp by lady Emigrées.
Even the Napoleonic Wars did not really break the links binding France
and England. In some ways they may even be said to have strengthened
them. Not only were our troops always on the Continent, but Napoleon
occasionally made a great sweep of any English travellers he could
catch, either in France, or in the countries which he successively
conquered. These unfortunate people were what would now be called
“interned” in various French towns, where in some cases they were
compelled to remain for years. But I am glad to tell you that these
forlorn creatures were treated most kindly by their French neighbours,
and when they finally came back to England, so fond had they become of
France that some of them used to go back there for two or three months
of each year.
Gradually, it is difficult to say why, the two countries drifted apart.
Indeed it began to seem that the nearer they grew together in a material
sense—the less and less time it took to get from London to Paris, for
instance—the less all that was best in French art and in French life,
appealed to English people.
One thing that perhaps made the English nation distrust the French was
France’s constant change of rulers. After France had had a king for a
few years she would suddenly change about and have a republic; then
would come a king again, another small revolution, and then an emperor!
It was during the reign of an emperor, Napoleon III, that Paris became
for the first time the playground of Europe, the place where foreigners
went rather to amuse themselves in stupid ways, instead of to see
beautiful things and to meet agreeable and interesting people.
Then, quite suddenly, there came a terrible day, just forty-four years
ago, when the playground of Europe became a battle-ground, and when,
with surprise and horror, England saw that the French, busily engaged in
amusing themselves and other people, had entirely neglected to get ready
for the awful thing, War, which had suddenly come upon them. As a result
of this neglect, Germany, for the first time in their joint history,
conquered France.
So easily, so surprisingly quickly, was this conquest achieved, that it
made the Germans get what is vulgarly called “swelled head.” It also
undoubtedly led to their confident belief that everything must go well
with them in the present war. But France, as Germany now knows to her
bitter cost, had learned her lesson. Without spending nearly so much
time and thought on war, and the terrible engines of war, as Germany had
done for forty years, she yet prepared quietly and soberly for the big
conflict which, unlike England, she felt quite sure must be coming on
Europe, if only because of the extraordinary preparations which she
noticed her bullying neighbour was continually making.
II
You may know that the beautiful provinces or counties of Alsace and of
Lorraine were the heavy price France paid for her defeat at Germany’s
hands in 1870. But these two provinces always remained French at heart,
and their possession by Germany was like an open wound in France’s side.
Small wonder, therefore, that when war was declared the first thought of
the French Government was, unwisely and imprudently as many people now
think, to throw an army into Alsace.
The rapture with which the people there welcomed the French advance was
changed into terror when the fortunes of war brought about a temporary
retreat. The Germans hate these Alsatians, and cruel was the vengeance
they took on them. One terrible example of their revenge aroused deep
feelings of pain and horror all over the world, the more so that they
actually boasted of the act in the following words:
“The German column was passing along a woody defile, when a little
French lad (Französling) belonging to one of those gymnastic societies
which wear tricolour ribbons (_i.e._ the Eclaireurs, or Boy Scouts), was
caught and asked whether the French were about. He refused to give any
information. Fifty yards further on a battery suddenly opened fire from
the cover of a wood. The lad was asked in French if he had known that
the enemy was in the wood. He did not deny it. Then walking with firm
steps to a telegraph post he stood up against it, with a green vineyard
at his back, and received the volley of the firing party with a proud
smile on his face. Infatuated wretch! It was a pity to see such wasted
courage!”
But we know that his courage was not wasted, and that by their
ill-advised recital of that little boy’s heroism, the Germans inspired
innumerable Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen too, to show themselves even
braver and more fearless for love of country than they might otherwise
have done.
It was near a town called Nancy that there took place a touching
incident two days after the outbreak of war.
A French detachment came into contact with German troops; soon the
Germans retired, leaving behind them a young wounded officer. The French
soldiers picked him up, and behaved, as I am glad to say our allies
always do behave to their wounded enemy, not only with mercy but with
kindness. He was, however, dying, and his last words were, “Thank you,
gentlemen. I have done my duty. I have served my country, as you are
serving yours.”
This young officer was Lieutenant Baron von Marschall, son of the late
Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who for a few months was German
Ambassador in London. He had been, till a few days before the
declaration of war, a happy and popular Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.
Duty must have been one of Nelson’s favourite words, for not only did he
signal the word in his immortal message, “England expects every man to
do his duty,” but the last words he ever spoke were, “I have done my
duty; I praise God for it.” The French have some fine sayings concerning
duty. Of these the oldest and the finest is, “Fais le droit, advienne
que pourra.” “Do thy duty whatever may happen.”
It was in Lorraine that Georges André—one of France’s most famous
runners, who is also a Rugby Internationalist, and scored against both
England and Ireland in last season’s matches—won the Médaille Militaire
(the French Victoria Cross). André, with his company, was surrounded by
a large German detachment in a small village. They fought like lions,
and he himself at last captured the enemy’s standard, regaining the
French lines under a hail of bullets.
We have seen how the German Commander on the fall of Liège handed
General Leman back his sword. Much about the same time that this was
occurring in Belgium, a similar incident, on a humbler scale, was
happening in Alsace.
A Uhlan patrol was surprised by French soldiers. They all took to their
heels save one, who fought magnificently until finally overpowered by
force of numbers. His French captors, much to his surprise (for the
German soldiers had been told the infamous lie that the British and
French gave no quarter to the wounded), shook him warmly by the hand,
exclaiming, “Tu es un chic type!” a meed of praise which it is
impossible to translate. They also showed their admiration of his pluck
in a more practical manner, for though they were short of food
themselves they supplied him with food and drink before he was taken to
the General Quarters.
One likes to remember that in no great war have men had the monopoly of
gallant deeds. In this book you have read, and will read, of many such
performed by women. A lady can no longer defend a castle, as was done in
mediæval Christendom by so many great-hearted wives whose husbands were
away fighting. But she can risk her life, and lose it too, for her
country, as the following pathetic story proves:
Madame Favre-Schwarz, of Basle, a young and beautiful French lady,
married to one of the richest merchants in Alsace, was executed after a
court-martial very early in the war. She had attempted to blow up an
important tunnel on the line of the Rhine near Leopoldshöhe, in order to
hinder the advance of German troops towards her beloved country. Madame
Schwarz met her death bravely, and shouted “Vive la France!” as she
fell.
After this war is ended, and indeed during the conduct of this war, I
hope that no one will ever again sneer at a woman merely for being a
woman.
Splendid work has been done to help the men at the front by the women of
each of the countries—those of our enemies as well as in our own and
those of our allies—during the course of this awful struggle. I was told
by a wounded soldier, to whom I had the privilege of talking in a London
hospital, that what struck him most during the first terrific battles in
which he took part, was the way in which Frenchwomen of all ages, from
aged crones to little girls, came into the trenches under fire with
fruit and water. This was a true errand of mercy, for during the earlier
part of the war the heat was terrible, and our soldiers suffered awfully
from thirst.
When the enemy entered Soissons the Mayor of the town had already left
it. Accordingly, a certain Madame Macherez, the widow of a former
Senator—or, as we should say, of a former member of the French House of
Lords—informed the Commander that she was quite ready to take over the
government of Soissons.
He assented, and at once she took charge of the police, of the fire
station, and of the hospital. She “ran” the town most successfully, and
that though the German Commander began by making enormous demands on the
unfortunate citizens. He asked for nearly 200,000 pounds (weight) of
food, including preserved meats, smoked sausages, and flour, and 40,000
pounds (weight) of tobacco, adding the significant threat that if all
this were not at once forthcoming Soissons would be burnt to the ground.
Madame Macherez bluntly told him that it would be just as reasonable for
him to ask for the sun and the moon as for all these things. She
offered, however, to give what she could, and not only was her offer
accepted, but the town was spared the dreadful fate which befell many
places in the North of France.
We can easily imagine this brave woman’s joy when, a few days later, the
same troops who had behaved in an arrogant, if not in a barbarous,
manner passed in full retreat through Soissons!
The French have a peculiar, passionate love for their flag—the
Revolutionary tricolor which banished the old lilies of France and under
which Napoleon led his soldiers from victory to victory.
Very early in this war a light infantry regiment, closely engaged by the
enemy, saw over twenty men who in turn held the standard cut down; a
fresh soldier immediately grasped the coveted trophy and held it aloft,
while his comrades ringed him round with dead. So it went on until
supports arrived, and the standard and the little remnant of gallant men
were saved.
I must tell you what a London lady did to cheer and encourage the young
men who were eagerly joining the colours. She lives in a street where
recruits are constantly passing, and she felt sad to see how weary they
often looked, and what little notice passers-by took of them. She
therefore bought a large Union Jack, and whenever a contingent of
recruits marched by she hurried to her front door and waved the flag,
thus showing them that there was at least one person there who wished to
do them a little honour and felt gratitude for what they were doing for
England. In due course she was rewarded, for an officer, before then
quite unknown to her, called specially to tell her how much his men had
been cheered and touched by her action.
Some time before the British airmen’s daring raid into Germany, two
French flyers, Lieutenant Cesari and Corporal Prudhomme, performed a
magnificent exploit over Metz.
They left Verdun under orders to reconnoitre and destroy if possible the
Zeppelin sheds at Metz. The two airmen flew over the line of forts, the
lieutenant at about 8000 feet up, and the corporal at 6500. In the midst
of a cloud of bursting projectiles they kept on their way, but a little
before they arrived above the parade ground the lieutenant’s motor
suddenly stopped!
Determined not to descend without having accomplished the task assigned
to him, he proceeded to volplane, and it was in planing that he launched
his bomb at the shed. A little later, much to his surprise, for he had
given himself up for lost, his motor re-started. Corporal Prudhomme also
dropped a bomb from his machine. On their return journey hundreds of
shells were fired at them, but they reached headquarters safe and sound.
A French aviator is reported to have brought down from the skies a
German rifle bullet which he had caught in his hand! He was flying at a
height of about 7000 feet, when he suddenly became aware of a small
black object close to his head. He thought it was an insect of some
kind, and was enough of an entomologist to realise that a flying insect
at such a height was a curiosity. So he stretched out his hand and
grasped what to his amazement proved to be a bullet! It was evidently a
rifle bullet that had been fired almost vertically, and had there
reached its utmost elevation.
It has been said that this great war has been waged in a very pitiless
manner, but there have been, as we have seen, merciful exceptions.
One of these was the reconciliation on the battlefield between a French
and a German soldier, who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town
of Blâmont. They were there all through the cold, dark night, with only
the dead about them. When dawn came they began to talk to one another,
and the Frenchman gave his water-bottle to the German. The German sipped
a little, and then kissed the hand of the man who had been his enemy.
“There will be no war in Heaven,” he said.
Boys, as we know, have played a splendid part in the war. One of the
bravest French lads, whose name I am sorry I cannot tell you, saved the
town in which he lived from total destruction, and from French shells.
It was at Montmirail, where the German Headquarters Staff was for a few
brief hours installed in the château of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld.
When the first French shell burst, the Germans did not wait for a
second; they quickly cleared out. But of this retreat the French could
not know anything, so they went on firing. It was then that a brave lad,
in order to save the castle, took his bicycle and rode out with the
shells shrieking above his head to inform the battery that the enemy had
fled.
Surprise was felt in our country when it was heard that quite young
German boys were in the firing line, but in the great American Civil War
there were lads as young as thirteen and fourteen, fighting. One of
them, called John Rhea, performed an act of extraordinary bravery during
the retreat from Fishing Creek. He recognised in a prostrate figure on
the ground an old school friend, named Sam Cox. Although he knew that he
faced almost certain death by trying to help the wounded lad, he bent
down, managed somehow to get him on his back, and carried him into
safety.
Here let me break off to tell you that German boys have not been
backward in helping their beloved country.
At the end of August, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, who is thirteen years
old, placed himself at the head of a corps of schoolboys, who not only
helped to get in the harvest, but did other useful work.
One of the most remarkable dogs in the world is a French dog. His name
is Tom (a very favourite name for a dog in France), and he has been
trained to help the wounded by carrying their caps to the Ambulance
Corps. He never touches a dead man.
A certain French soldier was struck by a fragment of shell in the arm.
With a bullet in his jaw as well, and a sabre cut over the head, the
wounded man was lying terribly alone amid a little heap of his fallen
comrades, when he felt a light touch on his forehead. It was Tom.
The soldier knew that the dog was trained to carry to the camp the cap
of every wounded man he found, but alas! the soldier had lost his. “Run
along, Tom. Go and find my comrades. Get along and find them!” Tom
understood. He dashed away to the camp, ran about among the men, pulling
at their capes and barking, and succeeded in drawing two ambulance men
to the spot where the wounded man was lying.
I think the story of French pluck which has touched me most was that of
Denise Cartier, the little girl who was so terribly injured in one of
the German bomb attacks on Paris. The first words which Denise said to
the policeman who lifted her up after the explosion were, “Surtout ne
dites pas à maman que c’est grave.” (“Above all, don’t tell mother that
it’s serious.”)
But alas! her mother had soon to know the worst, for brave little Denise
had to have her leg cut off. When she awoke after the operation, she
found by her bedside a pile of most beautiful presents sent her by
kindly Parisians who had heard of her misfortune. Among them was a gold
medal, and what do you think was engraved on it? Her own brave words to
the policeman, “Surtout ne dites pas à maman que c’est grave.”
III
Before going back to the fighting line, and especially before taking
leave of our ally, France, I want to tell you of what was, perhaps, the
bitterest blow suffered by her in the early weeks of the war.
That blow was the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.
Round Rheims are the most famous vineyards in France. All the little
hills are covered with grape-laden vines, and when the writer was in
that lovely, peaceful province of the Marne two years ago, all the happy
peasant people, men, women, and little children, were gathering in the
fruit, singing and laughing as they went along the narrow, fragrant
pathways cut through the vines.
Rheims is a beautiful city, as old as France herself. Once more, as in
1870, fierce fighting was taking place there at the time of the grape
harvest, recalling the fine lines of Bret Harte:
“Let me of my heart take counsel;
War is not of life the sum;
Who shall stay and reap the harvest
When the autumn days shall come?
But the drum
Echoed, ‘Come!
Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum.”
And death did reap a brave harvest amid the vineyards of France. Not a
human harvest alone, but one composed of cherished memories—memories
composed of all the French nation holds dear in its glorious, shadowy
past. Memories of every figure in the magnificent procession of France’s
kings and queens, of her saints, her statesmen, her warriors—especially
of Joan of Arc, the beloved warrior-maid. The Cathedral of Rheims was
not only the most perfect building of its kind in Europe—it was the
Westminster Abbey of France, respected by her enemies for a thousand
years.
Rheims has been sung by many poets, but perhaps the most beautiful lines
on the cathedral were written by James Russell Lowell:
“I stood before the triple northern port,
Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,
Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say,
_Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realised as this._”
It was with a feeling of amazement as well as of horror that one
September day the world learnt of the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.
The interior of the great church had been filled with wounded, most of
them, be it noted, German, and a large Red Cross had been hung out from
one of the towers. When the bombardment began, an effort was made to
move these poor soldiers out, but they were lying on straw, the straw
caught fire, and several of the people in the cathedral were killed by
the German shells, including four Sisters of Mercy. Much of the floor
became thickly littered with the stained glass, which fell in showers
out of the great windows, six hundred years old, which were, perhaps,
the chief glory of the Cathedral. To add to the horror of the scene the
wounded, terrified by the sight of flames and smoke, began trying
painfully to drag themselves out of danger.
As the unhappy German wounded appeared at the great doors, which someone
had already flung open, there rose from the townspeople assembled
outside a hoarse, insistent cry of “Kill them! Kill them!” For some of
those in the crowd unjustly suspected these men of having set the
cathedral on fire.
For a while it looked as if the German prisoners would be massacred, but
at the critical moment the Abbé Andrieux, a gentle, quiet little priest,
sprang forward, placing himself with outstretched arms before the great
doors. Behind him pressed forward the terrified wounded, standing,
crouching, and crawling—their one thought to escape the fire, smoke, and
falling glass and masonry inside.
“Stand back! Don’t fire!” shouted the Abbé “If you kill them you will be
far more guilty than they!”
Ashamed, the crowd shrank back. But they went on hissing and hooting
while their enemies were carried to shelter close by.
The present writer is almost as grieved at the injury which was also
done to the ancient Church of Saint Rémy, at Rheims, which is a hundred
years older than the cathedral. It had already been built some time when
Joan of Arc was born at Domrémy, the little village on the Upper Meuse,
which was, in a sense, the creation of the Abbé and monks of St. Rémy of
Rheims. The Abbé had a very kindly feeling for Domrémy, and he
generously gave Joan’s father, Jacques d’Arc, a patent exempting the
village from all taxes and tribute. This exemption was maintained until
the French Revolution. In the registers kept by the tax-gatherers the
blank space opposite the name of this parish was quaintly inscribed year
after year, and century after century, “On Account of The Maid.”
During the bombardment, the people of Rheims kept up their courage, and
that even when they had to live for many days in their cellars. An
Englishman had a talk with one old French gentleman in a cellar
dwelling.
“The one thing that keeps us going,” he said, “is my wag of a son, my
seventh, for every time a shell falls, or bursts over the house-tops, he
makes some fresh joke, the young beggar.”
“And where are your other six sons?” his English acquaintance inquired.
“They are all at the front, and I’ve heard from them too. They are as
happy as happy can be, for, you see, Monsieur, we are daily gaining
ground.”
This little anecdote will make you understand the great outstanding fact
about France. It is that every one of her sons is, will be, or has been,
a soldier! During the course of a great war, it is a splendid, inspiring
thought that the whole manhood of a nation is in arms to defend her. No
need of recruiting there—no need to remind the young men that their
country needs them. The French soldier is the French Everyman.
In old days I often felt pained to hear English people, just returned
from a holiday in France, smile—even jeer—at the rough, often unsmart,
look of the French soldier. These same people do not smile and jeer now
when they watch a rough, unsmart detachment of young Englishmen marching
to their drilling ground. They are touched and thrilled—or if they are
not, they ought to be. You cannot have smart uniforms when every man
over eighteen and under fifty is a soldier—or if you do, you sacrifice
the rest of the nation, as we now know Germany has done, to the awful,
sinister War god, the evil genius who lies in wait for happy, peaceful,
busy countries, which only arm, as France had done, not for attack, but
for defence.